This is cool! I never thought this is how it was done. I buy honey from the local store and I noticed that the color is darker. Any thoughts on this? May be it was mixed with other sweets? It tastes like melted sugar or something. I don't know the difference between the freshly harvested honey and the one from the store.
Hello STEVE. I believe that the colour difference is due to the type of nectar and pollen that is in the honey. This means that various plant sorts yield a different colour honey due to their plant's pollen and or nectar. As for store bought honey--a great deal of the honey available in stores have been mixed with other sorts of honey (sometimes from outside your country). This practice is is common here; however, the producers of the honey are required by law to state this on the label of their honey jars. The small-time beekeepers here simply sling the honey from their own bees in the uncomplicated manner which I have illustrated in my posting above. We do not mix the honey that we sell. Unless one makes "creamed honey"--but that is a whole other subject. My partner was planning to make some for herself, as you can save this longer...however there was such a demand for the honey, that I did not have any left after a couple of weeks. I do not know the entire process that the big-time companies use, but I dare say it is quite different. Most of it tastes oké, I suppose but it is always so good to taste one's own. Hi CALIN-- I can understand your interest and desire to keep bees. I could not have kept them when I was travelling and working so much. Now I have taken time for myself. Who knows, perhaps you will one day have the time and room to keep them yourself. My advice (from personal experience) do not wait any longer than you have to. I seriously regret that I had not started with bees earlier.
Steve, if you get a chance to buy some local honey, do it! Its so much nicer than store bought! I bought a jar of Black Locust honey from a farmers market, its very good. Local Black Locust honey ( photo / image / picture from TheBip's Garden )
Oh wow! I haven't seen honey that light ever. None of mine has ever come out looking like this. Last year we harvested a frame that was the WORST honey I have ever tasted...BLECH! it must have been from black walnut. Absolutely the nastiest honey ever made. One other frame tasted like the honey had been toasted. It was the really a nice honey, but I have no idea what it was made from.
Hehe Id never seen honey that light either, which is why I asked about it. Ive always wondered how people know what kind of honey the bees make? By taste alone?
Bipper--Herer one can know because the beekeepers take their hives to certain areas to gather nectar...such as heather fields, Linde groves, phacelia fierlds, etc. Aside from this, there are ways to have the honey analysed for pollen type to determine what the majority is, and THAT then confirms what sort of honey you have. It will never be 100% one sort of pollen, because bees go where they like. I do not know what these established limits are for the different types of honey, but I'll bet that it is findable somewhere on the internet. That honey of yours is very light.
